Publications
Qin, S., Cai, M., Fuller, S., & Qian, Y. (2022). Gender, Parenthood, and Employment During COVID-19: An Immigrant-Native Born Comparison in Canada. Canadian Ethnic Studies 54(3), 63-108. doi:10.1353/ces.2022.0025.
Abstract: The COVID-19 pandemic has upended how we live and work. In Canada, the gender gap in employment among parents with young children widened substantially during the pandemic. Previous studies, however, examine parents in Canada without distinguishing them by immigrant status, although immigrant versus Canadian-born parents may have distinct work-family experiences. In this study, we investigate how the intersection of parental and immigrant statuses influenced change in gender employment gaps during the pandemic. Drawing on Labor Force Survey (LFS) microdata from March 2019 to February 2021, we examine the probability of employment by gender, parental status, and immigrant status. When comparing the school closure period (March to August 2020) relative to the same months in 2019 (pre-pandemic), immigrant women, irrespective of parental status, witnessed larger declines in employment than their male counterparts and non-immigrants, and the gender gap widened the most among recent immigrants with school-aged children. When schools gradually reopened (September 2020 to February 2021), employment recovered faster for recent than established immigrant mothers. Overall, our findings show that among parents of young children, the growing gender gap in employment during the pandemic was concentrated among immigrants, with immigrant mothers disproportionately disadvantaged. This study illuminates how the pandemic exacerbated intersectional inequalities based on gender, parenthood, and immigrant status.
We used STATA 16 to analyze the data. To obtain a copy of our code for replication purposes, please contact me directly.
Working papers
Confiding in Strangers: Trust and Mental Health Service Use in China
Abstract: Research on trust has formed a dichotomous conceptualization of trust as established through either rational calculation or emotional intimacy, neglecting other possibilities. Drawing on Simmel’s theorization of the Stranger and Zelizer’s relational perspective, I argue that “stranger trust” is a third type of trust that frames the trusted person as a Simmelian stranger through interactional negotiations. Using interview data with mental health service consumers in China, I address the question: how do participants of therapeutic relationships form trust under the unfavorable institutional environments for mental health services in China? My findings show that participants in therapeutic relationships create trust by framing the service provider as a “Stranger”, which is established through three interactional processes 1) socially locating the service provider through affinities and differences, 2) protecting social distance, and 3) depersonalizing emotions. From the client’s perspective, these interactional processes mitigate the risk posed by a lack of institutional regulation for mental health service provision. This study calls attention to how relational practices create and maintain trust in settings with weak institutional support for trust.